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Author Topic: 16mm - Is this possible/feasible Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-24-2006 09:28 AM                        For whatever it's worth, I would budget $300 for 400' of 16mm color negative, including process and workprint. By the time you edit this and make an optical-track print, the cost goes up substantially. Don't forget to figure in camera rental, shipping charges to the lab, etc., etc. If the goal is to get quality sound from an existing 16mm print, it would likely be cheaper to get a dubber that can be interlocked to the projector, record the sound (from video or other source) to magnetic film, and run that in interlock with the picture. There are some all-in-one double-system 16mm machines (Siemens and Bauer made them, at least) that allow you to do this fairly painlessly. Alternatively, you could record SMPTE timecode on the magfilm and use that to synchronize the picture to sound on DAT or some other source.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-24-2006 11:06 AM                        deleted post  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-24-2006 11:07 AM                     quote: Peter Berrett have a 16mm projector but have never been impressed with the optical sound. Then it obvious you have not heard 16mm reproduced with an Eastman 25 16mm projector. Not to mention the outstanding projected image this projector is capable of it has without doubt the finest optical playback of any 16mm ever produced... including those supposed high end German machines made today. As a bonus the film rides on ruby balls in the film gate which basically do not wear out. It also makes it the gentlest of all 16mm machines available(used only). If Kodak built this projector today it would probably cost in excess of 50K. quote: Cameron Glendinning A Trip to officeworks and you could buy a $899 W/S DLP 4 colourwheel Video Projector that would look better than a kini. The only decent looking colorwheel system ever devised is the CBS Color system colorwheel based monitor that has been restored and is actually working at the TV Museum in Ohio. Probably good looking because the CBS system is an additive color system. I have yet to see any good looking DLP or LCD colorwheel based televisions. There are always some artifacts introduced by the spinning wheel one way or another. CRT's still rule and occupy the best of the best HD television projectors. Mark  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-25-2006 08:12 AM                        Mark, we had 4 Eastman 25Bs in our complex, and one of them was purchased by the Brooklyn Museum. Although I may have mentioned this before, we ran what had to be a reduction print from the original 35mm neg of MICROCOSMOS -- it was letterboxed at 1.66. When I came into work for the second shift, I looked at the screen and I swear at first I thought I was watching 35mm -- the image was THAT excellent. Only when I looked up at the booth did I realize it was the 16mm. If Hollywood wanted to save all that money on prints, which seems to be their sole motive for the push to digital (it sure isn't to offer something that exceedes the QUALITY of 35mm), they could have easily gone to 16mm, at least for those thousands of theatres with around 150 seats and small screens. 16mm done right can look pretty damn impressive. OK, they would still have to ship prints, but at a much reduced cost and the exhibitor would only be forced to spend $50k on a new projector instead of $120k. Oh, and just to emphasize how stunning the engineering was on those Eastmans, I once was running Kodak 16mm weave and jitter test film and was a little disappointed when the registration lines were moving around more than I had anticipated. Then I removed the apeture gate assembly and low and behold, the sprocket holes of the test film which were then visible on the screen were rock steady whereas the image was not. The intermittent precision on this machine exceeded the tolerances of the test film printer! We still have them set up in both theatres and mostly they are used for film festival material or some silent films where 16mm prints are all that are available. But more and more filmmakers who enter works in these film festivals have unfortunately pretty much abandoned 16mm in favor of video production. And it shows.  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 06-25-2006 01:44 PM                       I've always been a proponent of horizontal 16mm. With a width of about 3 or 4 normal frame heights, the image area is close to, or greater than, that found in 1.85:1 35mm. This, of course, is the Reed Film System.  |  IP: Logged Cameron Glendinning Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 845 From: West Ryde, Sydney, NSW Australia Registered: Dec 2005 posted 06-26-2006 06:38 AM                     The basic point re the DLP projector vs 16mm kini is that the 16mm kini is not that great. Ultimately it is an expensive film copy of video signal from a TV set. Yes, that $899 Acer 4 segment dlp projector does suffer from rainbow, I have a similar projector at home and use a gray screen to minimize the effect but accept the occasional imperfection for the joy of a big screen. Its so cheap and the pictures not bad ! I have a lovely crt w/s television for quality viewing! LCD projectors also have drawbacks, blown pixels are one and they also have a big fly screen effect / even 3 panel / until you get into HD and then LCD's tendency to slowly go green. 7 segment dlp projectors start from $1600 and are a better cheap option. On the other end of the spectrum, the cinema that I work at has recently bought a cineo 3 HD W/S DLP from projection design, its a e cinema stlye of projector. It's results are stunning on our 30 ft screens. Our old 16mm projector, with a modern print can still outperform it, just. Audio wise though, even though 16mm can be very clean, DVD's 5.1 is noticably better. The best audio I have heard for a 16mm presentation was when I briefly worked at the National Film Theatre in London, England, in 1994. We did a super 16mm presentation with Dolby Stereo audio interlocked from 35mm magnetic film /magnatech. It sounded great! What was truly wierd was the screen masking being set for 1.33 on the left of screen and scope on the right ! presenting a w/s image off centre! [ 06-27-2006, 07:35 PM: Message edited by: Cameron Glendinning ]  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-26-2006 03:24 PM                     quote: Tim Reed This, of course, is the Reed Film System. Tim, This has existed since the mid 60's. At the Museum Of Science And Industry there were two exhibits that I used to maintain... one was the Farm Exhibit and the other was the Circus Exhibit. Both used Simplex X-L's that were modofied by Worth Baird at La Vezzi. They were converted to run 16mm vertically. I can't remember if the image was two or three frames long but a special image rotator lens presented the verticle from the film image as a wide screen 2.21 image on the screen. The Sears sponsered Circus exhibit was shown in its verticle format to give the impression of the height of the high wire act. Both films were originated in Todd A-O 65mm. The end result image on the verticle screen was ok but the image on the Farm Exhibit sucked big time due to poor optical quality of the image rotator lens. Long ago this stuff was replaced with other exhibits and it no longer exists. BTW:The 16mm film was run from endles loops and they got about 6 months out of a print. Mark  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-26-2006 11:39 PM                        And in this hypothetical, our commercial 16mm system would utilize DTS code so it could have exactly the same sound quality with the same number of channels as 35mm. I've been told that 16mm release prints have already incorporated DTS placing the code in the original analog track area with no modification to the projector at all -- the audio out can be fed with some modification to the DTS processor. Scope would be conventional 2x anamorphic, but 1.85 would, of course, be what it should have ALWAYS been with 35mm, ISCOVision, i.e., a mild anamorphic squeeze/stretch instead of cropping, unless the Reed-A-Rama system is employed for Super Wide Screen Dimension.  |  IP: Logged Ron Curran Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 504 From: Springwood NSW Australia Registered: Feb 2006 posted 06-27-2006 01:21 AM                        ... and you could do a vertical squeeze on a horizontal 16mm VistaVision to give you 4 x 3. Seriously, folks, the DTS on 16 was a good idea. So was ISCOvision Colortech sound and all the other ideas. But look ... in the sky ... its DIGITAL!  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 06-27-2006 03:00 PM                        DTS has been used with 16mm prints: http://www.dtsonline.com/cinema/specialvenues/ quote: DTS is capable of playing back up to 10 channels of digital sound for 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm prints in 5 perf, 8 perf, and 15 perf. Some of our screening rooms have EASTMAN Model 25 and Model 30 16mm projectors, and they are NOT for sale. These projectors were designed and built by the same Kodak folks who designed the Lunar Orbiter in the 1960's.  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 06-30-2006 09:17 AM                       quote: Mark Gulbrandsen Tim, This has existed since the mid 60's. Yes, I came up with the idea when I was four. quote: Frank Angel unless the Reed-A-Rama system is employed for Super Wide Screen Dimension You got it, pal! Btw, Frank... we're still waiting to hear your radio spots posted here. You think I'm kidding about this, but I'm not.  |  IP: Logged

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